hamletta's last stab diner

The Tale Of the Truck

2011-01-16T20:58:00.007-05:00

Last Sunday, I served as assistant minister. I couldn't do anything right.

I not only forgot how to serve Holy Communion, but I forgot how to sing, which I've been doing all my life.

Then on the way home from church, the engine in my truck just...stopped.

I put my hazard lights on, but I had to wait a couple of changes of the light to push it onto a side street. It was funny how people kept pulling up to the bumper, baby, then finding out Mr. Truck wasn't going anywhere.

Mr. Truck's oil was low, so I trekked the three blocks to the Mapco. Thank God I had worn my longjohns. It was bitter cold in Nashville terms.

I knew Mr. Truck's timing chain had broken.

I walked to the Germantown Café.

They were closed, but the staff there were so kind to me. Even though they were officially closed, they gave me a Bloody and a phone book to search for tow trucks. I finally found one, but it would be $75 cash.

Lucky for me, my bank still has a branch in Germantown.

The gentleman driving the tow truck told me of the brutal work he'd put in during the previous week's snowstorm.

Did you know that towing is divided up by area, and if a tow doesn't show up within 30 minutes, Metro can call another? Neither did I.

Anyway, he was kind enough to drop me at the Eastland Kroger, because he was going that way. So I was able to get my grocery shopping done and walk home.

But then the truck! It's old enough to have graduated from college, if it were a person.

A Thousand Dollars! Yikes!

I can't afford a car note; and a truck is a good thing to have. So I took the plunge.

I am so glad I did. It's a whole new vehicle. And no, I won't tell you which shop did the work, because they're backed up already.

DIAF?

2010-06-26T01:58:00.004-04:00

I can't use this expression, because my baby sister really did DIAF, in August, 1967.

Tonight I said it in anger, and I hated the words coming out of my mouth.

I'm not offended by the meme; it's an abstract concept to those who use it.

The One True Crab Cake

2010-04-23T02:02:00.002-04:00

This recipe is from former Maryland First Lady Mrs. Tawes's My Maryland Recipes. I consider it canonical, the only recipe you'll ever need.

I've had tarted-up, trendily seasoned, so-called crab cakes served to me by elitist chefs in the flyover states. But we East Coast lumpenproles know the blue crab's delicate flavor is easily overwhelmed by strong spices and funny sauces.

Crab cakes are poor people food! They are to be bound with mayonnaise and breaded with cracker crumbs the way God and Mrs. Tawes intended.

Mrs. Tawes’s Maryland Crab Cakes

(makes 8 to 10 cakes)

1 1-lb. can of back-fin lump crab meat, or 1 pound of claw crab meat, or a combination of 1/2 pound of claw meat and 1/2 pound of regular grade
2 eggs
2 Tbs. mayonnaise
1 Tb. Kraft horseradish mustard
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
5 drops Tabasco
1 Tb. chopped parsley
cracker crumbs
fat for frying

Combine all ingredients except crumbs and fat and mix together lightly. Form into desired-size cakes. Do not pack firmly. Prepare cracker crumbs by rolling out saltine crackers into fine crumbs, then pat or roll lightly on the crab cake. Fry in 1 1/2 inches of hot fat in iron frying pan on both sides until a golden brown. Remove and drain on absorbent paper and serve immediately.

You are permitted a dab of tartar or cocktail sauce, if you must. But don't tell me about it.

Advice To Young Men Who Would Be Pleased By The Company Of Young Women

2009-11-07T02:02:00.006-05:00

I've neglected this blog, but what the hell: About a week ago, I was at Kroger. It was a Thursday night (party night for your suitcase college attendees), and I passed these two young men in the parking lot. It was a brisk fall night, so there was no reason for me to smell them as I passed ten feet away.

But I did. They must have bought the Axe Body Spray crap lock, stock, and barrel, because this oily cloud of douchiness engulfed me as I passed them. I wanted to tell them, "No! Stop! You reek!" But they would have blown me off as some old broad.

We ladyfolk learned that lesson back in the '70s and '80s. Remember Jean Naté? I still have a bottle of it because it allegedly freaks cats out, and if you spray it on your sofa, they won't claw it. I don't think that's true, but it's nice to think that our feline friends have more discerning tastes than people who would wear Jean Naté.

Any scent that's dispensed in aerosol form is inherently trashy.

Those boys in the Kroger parking lot were adorable, and their own soapy-fresh boy-musk would have been heady enough for any girl. But noooo! They had to spray themselves with cheap perfume and propellants!

Would that propellants become repellants.

Does anybody want to schtup these guys? If so, how do they stop the watering of their eyes?

We Are Douchebags - watch more funny videos

Well, everything sucks.

2007-08-29T04:27:00.001-04:00

Except this picture of John Barrowman.

“It's like having Barbie represent women”

2007-05-09T15:06:00.000-04:00

From Nightline (yes, that Nightline):

Former child star Kirk Cameron and his evangelist colleague Ray Comfort had pledged to prove the existence of God, scientifically. Cameron and Comfort run an organization called the Way of the Master, which comprises a Web site and cable television show, all focused on preaching what they say is the truth of Christianity....

They were confronted by the might of the "rational response squad" in the form of unabashed atheists Brian Sapient and his comrade, a woman who goes by the name of Kelly. They had been included in a previous "Nightline" report, telling the story of the Blasphemy Challenge in which they invited atheists to deny the existence of the Holy Spirit by posting videotaped denunciations on their Web site.

Comfort and Cameron make videos where they use bananas and peanut butter to "prove the existence of God."

The stupid! It buuuuuurns! (H/T to PJ over at Not the Mad Priest's place for the title.)

Regret This!

2007-05-06T01:36:00.000-04:00

Y'know, I was thinking about that idiotic Supreme Court decision about late-term abortion, and it struck me that Justice Kennedy said that because some women regret having had an abortion, it should be outlawed.

That is the biggest crock of shit, y'all. Have you ever made a major purchase? A house, a car, a large appliance? A week later, you were convinced you'd made the biggest boner of your life, weren't you?

So I guess we'll be outlawing Realtors®, car dealerships, and HH Gregg next, right?

Didn't think so.

Bizarre

2007-04-22T15:24:00.000-04:00

Mike Daisey is a monologuist and author. At a recent performance, a "Christian" group staged a protest by walking out of the performance and dumping water on his notes. They didn't say who they were, and they wouldn't stay to talk with him.

As it turns out, they were visiting from out of town and had bought the tickets without knowing what the show was like. Now, I can understand their wanting to leave when they heard a few f-bombs and found out what they were in for, especially since the group was made up of high school kids. But did they really need to be disruptive and destructive? How is that Christian?

And what about the chaperones' responsibility to do some fucking research and find out what kind of show they were taking the kids to? What a bunch of self-righteous assholes.

A Boob For All Seasons

2007-04-21T19:52:00.000-04:00

When I think what this little shitstain tried to do to the Justice Department, I keep remembering this scene from A Man For All Seasons:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Sweet Chocolate Jesus

2007-04-21T19:50:00.000-04:00

These people are insane.

Prayers

2007-03-22T00:34:00.000-04:00

Sheesh. I never update this blog. I only got on tonight so I could remind myself of the address because somebody asked.

So I noticed that I still had Steve Gilliard's old address on the blogroll. Steve's hurtin' right now, in the hospital recovering from his second heart surgery, and he's a young man (well, my age, anyway).

If you're the praying sort, please remember him in your prayers. He has a fine mind and knowledge of military history that is invaluable to us liberals. He was calling this stupid war a snipe hunt before it even began.

We need him firing on all cylinders. And his family needs him, too. The way he writes about his niece and nephew, well, you just know he's a terrific uncle.

Fuck this shit

2007-02-01T05:21:00.000-05:00

The great Molly Ivins has died.

Shit, shit, shit.

I knew she was hurtin', but I prayed for her, and I convinced myself this wasn't going to happen, not this time. She was gonna pull through one more time. At least.

We need her down here, God! Maureen Dowd doesn't have her ginormous heart, and Dana Milbank, well, let's just not bring him up, OK?

Well, I guess God needed to laugh to keep from cryin', what with His children fighting this stupid war, and all.

Lord, have mercy

2007-01-20T03:18:00.000-05:00

The congregation at St. John's in Atlanta near-unanimously chose to call Brad Schmeling as their pastor in 2000. He told the congregation he was gay; he told the bishop he was gay. That was cool. Gay people are welcome to serve in the ELCA.

He also told everybody that if he met a special someone, he'd tell them about that, too. When he did, he did.

His congregation, which adores him, celebrated his commitment to his partner with a big ol' party. Then he told the bishop. And the bishop did his job and filed charges, because they violated the rules.

Gay pastors are allowed to serve, as long as they remain celibate. Because pastors have to remain celibate outside marriage, and gay people can't get married. See the beauty?

No, neither do I.

It's a sucky rule, but rules in the ELCA are voted on in General Assembly by clergy and laity alike. Last time around, rules that would have covered Pr. Brad and his partner passed a simple majority, but they needed a super-majority. It'll happen eventually, thanks to the brave witness of people like Pr. Brad and the congregation of St. John's.

Their actions are civil disobedience in its purest sense: I will openly violate this rule, and I will happily suffer the consequences, just to point out how stupid the rule is.

They're all taking a heeeeuuuuge risk. Pr. Brad could be turned out of ELCA and lose his rostered status as well as his pension, and St. John's could be cast out of ELCA and lose support from the synod. St. John's is like my church, the oldest Lutheran congregation in the city. Their current location is itself a rebuke to hatred and oppression.

If you're a prayin' wo/man, sign up for their prayer vigil.

Oh, dear

2007-01-20T03:09:00.000-05:00

This is so embarassing. The lovely and talented MadPriest has given me a shout-out.

Well, that wasn't so bad, but he's added me to his blogroll. Oy. That means I have to, like, keep it up and add more stuff and shit.

I only started because I wanted to blog a mission trip to the Gulf Coast, but I couldn't afford to go, so it's just here.

But Lord knows there's some shit goin' down in my neck of the woods, so I should probably blog on that. Plus, I have a post in mind going beyond George Sanders to all the plummy-voiced British villains of the Golden Era of Hollywood. So there you go.

Overboard (1987)

2006-12-04T00:05:00.000-05:00

Overboard is kind of like a mashup of a coupla Preston Sturges movies, with Capra's It Happened One Night thrown in.

The rich person forced into the life of a peasant is like Sullivan's Travels, even though John Sullivan never really has amnesia, but is temporarily out of it due to a blow to the head.

Then there's the spoiled yet spunky gal jumping off the yacht in full evening dress from, uh, Happened, I think. Clearly Edward Herrmann's upper-class twit in a captain's hat is an allusion to Rudy Vallee in The Palm Beach Story, only Herrmann's Grant Stayton III is a dickhead, and Vallee's character is actually very sweet, not to mention frugal.

I only got to thinking along these lines because I saw it as part of a double-feature on amnesia, where it followed I Love You Again, in which William Powell's tedious small-town Rotarian gets whacked on the head in the first reel, which cures his amnesia, returning him to his forner personality as a rakish con man, who impersonates the Rotarian on his return home, where he finds his wife ready to divorce his boring ass, and they fall in love all over again. Oh, and of course the wife is played by Myrna Loy, and it was directed by Woody Van Dyke.

I'd also spent most of the day exploring the life and work of Thorstein Veblen. I'd never heard of him before, but a passing reference to him in a Daily Kos diary led, as is the passing reference's wont, to Google, to Wikipedia, to.... Well, Google him y'ownself (I already gave you the link!), but suffice it to say I'd spent hours pondering the uselessness of the idle rich and the beauty of solid craftmanship and the evil of Calvinist thought, which produced the perversion that is Social Darwinism, which continues to fuck up our society to this day.

Canvassing is Hell

2006-10-18T01:13:00.000-04:00

You go out knocking on doors, and you run into people you know.

And then you find out people you adored died two years ago.

And you want to die because you weren't there for their funeral.

Life sucks sometimes.

I Love This Dog

2006-09-23T00:50:00.000-04:00

I'm going to marry him.

Look at that face. Does he not look like he's ready to start singing, "Nobody knows the trouble I seen...."

And his name is Job. His peoples did good.

God bless him for whatever put that pained look on his face.

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

2006-07-09T21:52:00.000-04:00

My stepmom took me to see this movie when it came out, and I'm sure she explained how it was a remake, not of Heaven Can Wait (1943), but of Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

In the years since, I've seen Mr. Jordan, and Heaven a few times, and Mr. Beatty's remake is really well done. He hits all the notes of the original, while fitting the plot neatly into the film world of the then-present. Dyan Cannon and Charles Grodin work the adulterous Mrs. Farnsworth and her lover neatly into the murder mystery farces that were then so popular. And should be again.

But anyway, everybody bitches about remakes, but they've been part of the movie picture since the beginning, and this a particularly good one.

And if you haven't seen the original Mr. Jordan, I would highly recommend it. It stars the fabulous Robert Montgomery, the father of the late Miss Elizabeth Montgomery, who we Space Race–Era babies remember as Samantha of Bewitched.

Any devotee of Bewitched or Ms. Montgomery in general can look at that photo on the right and see how much she looked like her daddy. And he was brilliant. It's a crime that he's largely been forgotten.

He started out playing Park Avenue playboys, but he wanted something more, so he took a role in The Big House, as yet another Park Avenue playboy who's been busted big-time, and accepts his fate.

It was his breakout role, and he went on to play an Irish serial killer and a PT boat commander.

He parlayed his stardom and WWII heroism into a chance to direct, and made fucked-up fantastic films like Ride The Pink Horse and Lady In the Lake, the latter innovative for its use of the camera as a substitute for the protagonist.

He was a Republican, but that meant different things back then. He was definitely elitist, if you've read the stories of the formation of the Screen Actors' Guild. But he really had been a PT boat commander, and his post–War work, like that of other pre–War pretty boys like Tyrone Power, belied a new seriousness.

He invented the entire concept of media training for Dwight Eisenhower, and smirked bitterly at the Nixon-Kennedy debate, saying that if Nixon had hired him, he woulda won.

He was probably right. And thank God Nixon didn't hire him.

Montgomery was so much smarter than Karl Rove. Because he loved people.

God love you, George Sanders

2006-07-04T01:48:00.000-04:00

Note: Mr. Sanders's birthday was July 3. This is what I get for dallying.

Mr. George Sanders would have been 100 years old today.

I'm a bit fatutzed with TCM for not acknowledging him.

But I would like to remember Mr. Sanders on his birthday. He rocked the house.

He won an Oscar for his role in All About Eve, and rightly so. Who else could deliver lines like, "She's a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Arts" with such aplomb?

Mr. Sanders was a White Russian.

His family had to flee St. Petersburg during the revolution. He tells a story in his memoirs about his uncle lying in bed with a pistol and having a manservant smear the ceiling with jam so he could shoot the flies that gathered to lap it up. Mr. Sanders felt the communists robbed him of the chance to emulate such voluptuous indolence, so he was a die-hard anti-Communist all his life.

Mr. Sanders got the idea to dip his toe into the theatre because of this cute, red-headed secretary who turned out to be Greer Garson. But he never did like it. Louis B. Mayer got a look at him early in his career and got it in his head that Mr. Sanders could be developed into a leading man. So he set up a lunch meeting.

On the appointed day, Mr. Sanders got so caught up working on a telescope he was building that he blew off the lunch. In his later years, he was grateful he hadn't made it, as a character actor can keep working when the bloom of youth has faded.

Everybody quotes his famous suicide note about how bored he was, but he left a second note for his little sister, in which he expressed his fear of becoming incapacitated. He'd had a couple of strokes, and had recently seen his mother and his wife die long, agonizing deaths. He wanted to check out while he could still wipe his own ass, so he did.

Wherever you are, Mr. Sanders, God bless you. I run into lots of fans of yours on these here internets. You are still loved.

Are people really this fucking stupid?

2006-05-27T02:36:00.000-04:00

Sadly, yes.

From the article, which I will try to post later, it's based on the "Golden Ratio," which is sorta like a Fibonacci Sequence. 'Cept differnt.

Silverback Mountain

2006-05-24T23:55:00.000-04:00

I have never liked Bill Frist. I was working at the Scene when his memoir came out back in '89, and I thought he was a self-involved weinerhead. I love watching him step all over his dick trying to run the Senate, and I love watching Trent Lott smirk in the background, despite Lott's status as a racist dickhead.

All that said, poor Bill isn't the one writing homoero...simianerot.... Aw, hell—fucking bizarre shit like this:

"When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes.

It's about the work he does taking care of the gorillas in the National Zoo, and God love him for it, because I grew up in DC and spent many happy Sunday aftenoons there.

But damn! This article is weird. Trent Lott's flacks must be high-fiving each other. If they're not laughing too hard to raise their arms.

Denmark really doesn't stink. Honest.

2006-05-24T23:40:00.000-04:00

As if anybody cares, I changed the name of the blog. I'd pulled it out of my ass, because I wanted to write a response to Lutheran Zephyr's "You're a Lutheran. What does this mean?" post. But I noticed he changed the format of his answer links from blog titles to names, and I just knew it was all my fault, because my blog was titled "denmark stinks," and of course, I am a piece of shit that the world revolves around.

But really, I know Danish-Americans as well as actual Danish Danes, and they are all lovely people, so that was a shitty title.

I apologize to all the .000742 people who read it.

Yeah, I'm Lutheran. You gotta prollem widdat?

2006-05-13T22:01:00.000-04:00

So, The Lutheran Zephyr has asked to write about why we're Lutheran and what it means.

So I've got a story. Or more like two. Anyway, they both start out with the fact that my grandmother was raised Methodist, and my grandfather was raised Catholic. The story of how we wound up Lutheran takes two different turns from here, depending on what kind of mood my mom's in, or how many cocktails she's had.

The first version says they split the difference, since Lutheranism is only once removed from Catholicism, whereas Methodism, being an offshoot of Anglicanism, is twice removed.

The second version says my grandfather ran screaming from the Catholic church and didn't want to go to no church no how, but my grandmother put her foot down when the babies started coming. So my grandfather says, "Well, alright, but only if I can go to church with my buddy, Hans Pfeffengruberschmidt." (Not his real name)

Hans, being German and all, was a Lutheran. So we wound up being Welsh-Scottish-Irish Lutherans. Which is kinda weird, since a lot of American Lutheran culture is bound up with German and especially Scandanavian ethnicity, not to mention the regional culture of the Northern Midwest. So I grew up Lutheran on the East Coast, and neither lefse nor lutefisk has ever touched my lips.

Now, even on the East Coast, there are well-established chunks of Lutherans, in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. But Maryland was established by English Catholics, so Lutherans were a bit exotic in the then-exurb where we lived. Our church had only been established in the mid-'60s and was very small, a Danish Modern quonset hut with folding metal chairs instead of pews. But the ceilings were festooned with handmade banners: peace and love and joy and doves. My mom sang and played guitar in a little group that sometimes augmented the traditional choir/organ music with "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." My friends and I, having picked up on the Jesus People/Folkie/Sing Out! stuff wore jeans to church and thought ourselves very Deep and Spiritual. (Hey, it was the '70s.)

Our church attendance tapered off when I was about 12 or so, but then one of my friends, who hadn't been raised in any faith, suddenly got religion when we were about 14 and starting riding her bike to services at the Presbyterian church two doors down from my church. Well, I wasn't about to let her show me up, no sirree. I'd been raised Lutheran. I had a real faith, not some teenage whim! So I signed up for confirmation class.

Hoo boy! I was going to the junior high one district over, and a new church had been planted over there, so other than Scott and Debbie, who I'd known since we were little, I didn't know anybody. Add to that the curriculum, which was somewhere between lame and nonexistent, and I was convinced I'd made a horrible mistake. All the time we'd been doing things with the Methodists and the Presbyterians on Church Row—Vacation Bible School, religious plays—and now I wanted to know how come we were Lutherans and they were Methodists and Presbyterians. And the classes consisted of seeing how many crackers you could stuff in your mouth and still whistle. I am not shitting you.

Well, I decided this was a big fucking waste of time, but I neglected to inform my mother of this decision, so the next Sunday when she got ready to drive me to confirmation class, I was nowhere to be found. This resulted in a screaming battle royale, the kind all mothers and daughters are all too familiar with. However, she's since decided I was probably right. Yeah, the curriculum sucked, but in addition I was there for the wrong reasons, and we were no longer attending church as a family, so there was no context.

Fast-forward to the early '80s, and I went off to college in Tennessee. No way that culture shock can be overstated. And it was my first introduction to the Church of Christ. My first off-campus roommate was the sweetest girl in the world, and she'd been raised in that faith. We got to talking the big questions one night, as college kids often do, and she told me—quite matter-of-factly—they were taught that anyone who wasn't Church of Christ was going to burn in Hell.

Well. I gasped in horror. No matter how many JAP jokes we shared, no matter how we grumbled at getting stuck behind an Amish wagon on a two-lane road, no matter how we snickered at the elaborate network of shelves in the basement of the house our friends bought from a Mormon family; I was taught that religion was a highly personal thing, and was always to be treated with respect (y'know, in public, anyway). I'd grown up around people from damn near every faith imaginable, and the idea that any of them was going to hell was unthinkable.

With that in mind, I immediately apologized for denigrating her religion, but she said, "Don't worry. I'm having a little trouble with that one myself."

Combine this with the rise of the Religious Right, and that's enough to put you off God right there. Add to that the fact that Lutherans are damn near invisible in Tennessee, and there I was, an apathetic agnostic. Ten years later, I was going through a rough patch in life, and thought going to church would be nice. I cruised a Lutheran church, and saw their affiliation: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. "Well," I thought, not knowing about the ELCA merger, "even the Lutherans down here are all crazy." But I'd decided I believed in God, and found Deism, which worked for me at the time.

Fast forward to the gruesome aftermath of the 2004 Presidential Election. All the talk about "Values Voters" was roiling the community at Daily Kos. The atheists were pissed off at the religious people, and were blaming them for the anti-gay crap that none of the religious people in the community had endorsed. While I wasn't religious myself, I had enormous respect for people who were, and I knew enough about different denominations to know that the Religious Right wasn't the extent of Christianity in America. I started throwing in my two cents about my childhood faith experiences in peace and justice work, and then got into Lutheran doctrine.

I realized I was in over my head, so I started reading up a little. I remembered the Luther movie, which I'd really wanted to see, so I wrote to my mom and said we should watch it together, and by the way, how the hell did a bunch of Welsh-Irish-Scottish people get to be Lutheran? So we watched Luther, and she knew who everybody was! She'd had non-sucky catechesis, plus Luther League.

Well, I decided I needed to have my own personal confirmation class, so I read Web sites and blogs, and checked out books from the library. The more I learned, the more I thought this Luther guy was a beautiful cat—notwithstanding that anti-Semitic stuff.

But then I decided it was a little silly to just sit around reading books about religion, kinda like sitting around reading cookbooks without eating any food. So after several months of hemming and hawing and oversleeping, I moseyed my way to First Lutheran Nashville.

It just felt right. I felt like I belonged there, like it was just the right place to be. And I still feel that way, even if I oversleep and miss services. It's so different from what I grew up with, as it's and old, old, old congregation with a gothic building with kneelers and everything!

And the church has shaken off so much of its anti-Catholic, Pietist crap. I remember my mom envying her Catholic cousins when her uncle died, that they had all this ritual to lean on. She says our old church used to celebrate the Eucharist once a month, but I swear it was about quarterly. Whatever, I wanted to race through confirmation so I could celebrate it, too, but kids don't have to do that anymore, which is supercool. Like my beloved blogger LutheranChik says, Jesus said, "Take and eat," not "Take and understand."

It was inevitable

2006-05-02T02:12:00.000-04:00

Yes, we have a blog.